Sunday, July 5, 2009

New York is full of soot

The dirt tax appears in cleaning costs, replacement costs and even the inability of New York homeowners to consider certain finishes and fabrics because they’re just not practical.

Not in a city where schmutz — the preferred New York term for the black gritty material — accumulates on every surface.

White rugs and sofas can become filthy anywhere. But experts (who include anyone who has ever dusted, vacuumed or swabbed in the five boroughs) say New York City’s dirt level is highly unusual.

The culprit is soot, said Richard Kassel, an air pollution expert with the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

In one study cited by Mr. Kassel, soot in one stretch of Midtown Manhattan was found to contain 52 percent diesel exhaust, mostly from trucks, buses and construction vehicles. The other 48 percent was a mix of everything from ground-up car tires to sea salt, he said.

Bad as it is, the air here in NYC is much improved from the 1960s. In fact it was in 1966 that an inversion kept the city's pollution at such high levels that over 160 people died during three days that autumn.

Requiring incinerators install scrubber pumps and eventually banning them entirely.

-All- of the measures elicited howls of "you'll kill industry" led to NYC have much improved air quality in the last 30 years.

I remember coming back from summers in Montaulk late 60s-70's you could actually feel the grit in your eyes and on your neck for a few days 'till you got used to it.

Today, when I go to my place in Bangkok I have the same sensation. -Really- bad over there.

BTW: Many of the old hyper polluting buses and trucks that could not be upgraded economically to lessen emissions were sold to Mexico where that helped turn the famously excellent air quality of Mexico City into the disaster that it still is today, that and overpopulation.

2) People care about nature (and therefore become active to defend it) when they have access to it - a sense of it belonging to them equally. That's why we have no paid public programs and no membership fees.

3) After manufactureand shipping, kayaking, like biking, has no sooty emissions at all. The person breathes out some increased steam and CO2, but that's pretty minimal! :)

Cities don't have to choke on soot. We have much less pollution than we used to, but we can do far better.

thank you "Lino"---remember only too well the black soot coming through "closed" windows back when we had coal fired power plants and cleaning the window sills at least once a day and the apartment houses incinerators,furnaces etc --mygawd.Most had a more simplistic view of it all,that being "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and truly there was no epidemic proportions of asthmatic children among us either....talking grammar school years for our group- 50s-late 60s.

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